Jeremy Holden – Fauna & Flora Internationalhttp://www.fauna-flora.org
Fauna & Flora InternationalTue, 15 Aug 2017 08:56:03 +0000en-UShourly1Slither me timbers: snakes and scorpions of the Caribbeanhttp://www.fauna-flora.org/snakes-and-scorpions-of-the-caribbean/
Thu, 25 May 2017 14:32:31 +0000http://www.fauna-flora.org/?p=9493In a beautifully filmed but chilling sequence from BBC’s Planet Earth, we were shown a slithering carpet of serpents ambushing iguanas in the Galapagos Islands. As thrilling as this sequence was, the thing that most struck me was how abundant island racer snakes can be when their natural ecosystem is undisturbed.

This fact was particularly poignant for me because when the programme aired I was in the Caribbean, commissioned by Fauna & Flora International to photograph some of the planet’s most endangered reptiles, and the people working to save them.

On small islands, low diversity is often compensated for by high abundance. But these particular ecosystems are intensely fragile, and the slightest change – like the introduction of an alien predator – can destroy them. By ‘alien predator’ I am not referring to some dreadlocked bipedal crustacean, but assassins far more tenacious, such as the humble black rat and small Asian mongoose.

In the past the Planet Earth Galapagos racer scenario may have played out on the island of Saint Lucia, one of the places I was asked to visit. But the introduction of rats and mongooses devastated populations of both snakes and iguanas, and – although the latter still survives in low numbers – the Saint Lucian racer is now extinct on the mainland. A tiny relict population remains on Maria Major, a small forested island in Savannes Bay off the southern coast. I was told that only about 20 individuals survive there, making it the world’s scarcest snake.

Twenty is an educated guess, obtained after a recent mark-recapture study was conducted on the island. These snakes are so rare, in fact, that in a typical year Forestry Department and National Trust conservation staff will find only one or two individuals. Although I was to spend a night on Maria Major photographing other endemic reptiles, my chances of seeing the racer were considered so slim that it didn’t even appear on the species shot list I was given.

Instead, foremost were images of the Saint Lucia whiptail lizard, whose black, blue and yellow underside matches the colours of the national flag. This species is also an endemic that for many years survived only on the two small Maria Islands. Ironically, although it is also Critically Endangered, saving this species could be essential if the Saint Lucia racer is also to survive, as the whiptail is likely an essential prey species for the snake. This is the complex reality of conserving extremely rare island species: we sometimes need to protect one endangered species to prevent the extinction of another.

We arrived on Maria Major late, after a violent storm had turned midday gloomy and crepuscular. The five-minute boat ride from the mainland was choppy as the sea here is shallow. As we splashed up the beach it occurred to me that this island enjoyed a fragile peace, being a mere stone’s throw from the mainland with its introduced rats and mongooses that had so fundamentally changed the whole ecosystem.

My camp was simple: a string hammock and a rust-stained shower curtain borrowed from my friendly guesthouse on the mainland. I had heard that the island was infested with scorpions and brought an ultra violet torch in case the rumour was true.

While my Saint Lucian counterparts erected an elaborate camp, I looked for scorpions. There were four under the first rock I turned over, which was directly beneath my hammock. The UV light made them gleam magically, like polished turquoise. My colleagues crowded round to observe this marvel of fluorescence.

Scorpions under UV on Maria Major. Credit: Jeremy Holden/FFI.

The scorpions were bigger than I had expected and I asked the wildlife warden Stephen Lesmond about the effect of their sting. Apparently no one had been stung, and whether painful or deadly, no one knew. A quick scan with the UV light showed that they were certainly plentiful. Stephen shone the UV light around the camp he had constructed beneath a huge sprawling tree. Already scorpions were advancing up the branches from which the hammocks were hung, and others, jewel-like, were high in the canopy. Within moments the team abandoned me in the forest and decamped to sleep on the safety of the beach – apparently happier to encounter crabs rather than scorpions.

Searching for reptiles on Maria Major. Credit: Jeremy Holden/FFI.

I slept so well that I was still ensconced in my hammock like a pupating larva when Stephen prodded me awake early the next morning. There was a wry smile on his face, and when I glanced down at his hands it took a moment to realise I wasn’t dreaming. He was holding a slim slate-grey snake – a Saint Lucia racer.

Saint Lucia racer on Maria Major. Credit: Jeremy Holden/FFI.

Stephen gently placed the snake on a rock, and while I photographed it he went off in search of endemic pygmy geckos and the diminutive Saint Lucia thread snake – other species that appeared on my photographic shot list. A sudden yelp announced he had been nailed by a scorpion and was about to find out the consequences of its sting.

Evacuating Stephen in case the sting was serious, we departed the island earlier than planned – before the sun was high enough to bring out the whiptail lizards. This meant I had to leave Maria Major without even seeing one. However, we did find and photograph the pygmy geckos as well as one of the tiny thread snakes. At around 10 cm long, this recently-described species is one of the smallest snakes in the world, second only to the Barbados thread snake.

Saint Lucia thread snake. Credit: Jeremy Holden/FFI.

I felt a pang at missing the most important species on my shot list, especially because the Saint Lucia whiptail has now been promoted as a flagship species for the Maria Islands. But it was a pang made lighter by our other successes: at least we had some good pictures of the racer to help promote the importance of this tiny island. Stephen was happy, too. He had achieved hero status for finding a Saint Lucia racer, and had learned that a Maria Island scorpion sting is harmless.

Sadly, a few months after I left Maria Major in November 2016, the story took a darker turn. The Phase II proposals for the Desert Star Holdings ‘Pearl of the Caribbean’ development were announced. This plan detailed the creation of a major resort in southern Saint Lucia, and part of the development plan was to construct a causeway between the mainland and the Maria Islands.

If this were to happen, rats and mongooses could finally invade the island and the fine thread that keeps Maria Major’s endemic reptiles from extinction would be cut. The presence of a causeway would certainly prove disastrous for the whiptail lizard, pygmy gecko, and the world’s scarcest snake, but might also spell disaster for both the marine ecosystems of the Savannes Bay and the beautiful beaches that attract the tourists.

The fact that such a development was under consideration was shocking to both local communities and environmentalists across the world, who called on the developers to leave the precious Maria Islands alone. A petition quickly gained 75,000 signatories. Hearing the objections, Prime Minister Chastanet issued a clear promise on national television that the causeway will not touch the islands and that their wildlife is to be conserved.

We now await a revised plan for the Pearl of the Caribbean, and hope that the developers are now fully aware of how precious the Maria Islands are and will afford respect and protection to their small, beleaguered denizens.

]]>Voyaging deep into Myanmar’s caveshttp://www.fauna-flora.org/voyaging-deep-into-myanmars-caves/
Thu, 11 May 2017 11:15:30 +0000http://www.fauna-flora.org/?p=9465As the sun sinks over the dusty flatlands of Myanmar’s Kayin State, and a thread of emerging bats twists over the Salween River, the isolated spires, humps, and crags of karst limestone become flat as cut outs. Their blank greyness evokes gravestones, and the haunted silhouettes of ruined castles – death markers of something long past. And in a very real way they are. The limestone substance of these forms is a mineralised concretion composed of the fragmented skeletal remains of marine creatures – literally, a landscape of old bones.

One feature of limestone is its solubility. Rainwater dissolves the rock, eroding it into sharp, fluted peaks and creating a perforated landscape of sinkholes and caves known as karst.

Although these features may appear barren, especially in the desiccating heat of Myanmar’s dry season, they are beautifully analogous with the shallow tropical seabeds they once were. Like a coral reef the karst limestone habitat is teeming with specialist forms and endemic species.

Bat cave skull form Linno Cave Hpa-An. Credit: Jeremy Holden/FFI.

And this is one of the reasons Fauna & Flora International (FFI) is working to protect karst landscape areas across Southeast Asia. They are not only biodiversity hotspots, but also have an inherent potential to provide ecosystem and cultural services to local communities, who in turn have a motivation to help protect them.

The inhospitable nature of most karst landscapes has made them impossible to farm, and in heavily agricultural areas of Southeast Asia these inaccessible areas are the last places where undisturbed forests occur, providing a refuge for birds and primates that would otherwise have no habitat left.

The dark subterranean parts of karst are home to hosts of blind, pale species of invertebrates with tiny ranges, as well as to various species of bats some of which live in huge populations. In Myanmar, FFI has been looking at all these animals and has also focused on the benefits of guano collecting and how best to manage this in a sustainable manner.

Guano sacks. Credit: Jeremy Holden/FFI.

The high metabolic rate of insectivorous bats means they need to eat huge quantities of insects – many of them pests on nearby crops – each night and consequently produce copious amounts of guano (dung) which forms the basis for the cave ecosystem, with some beetles, millipedes and other animals dependent on this resource or the fungi growing on it. And herein lies the benefit for local farmers. Karst might not provide good land for farming, but the guano produced by the bats that live within the honeycomb of caves is a superlative fertiliser.

At the foot of a rounded limestone outcrop near Hpa An in Myanmar we watch the sun sink and a growing number of bats weaving their way down river in a corkscrew strand. Behind us is Linno Cave, from which the bats pour. An insectile static noise from the depths of the cave proves there are many bats still to emerge, and the deep musk of their urine-stink sits heavy in the air.

The local villagers tell me facts about the cave: there are four species of bat that occur in Linno. The overwhelming majority are the small wrinkle-lipped bats – some 400,000 in this cave alone. With a total of over half a million bats in this one small cave the potential for guano collection is significant. I learnt that the local villagers gather approximately 30 kg of guano per week.

I meet three village women the next morning preparing to enter the cave. They are at the cave mouth early, huddled around a bowl of liquid clay with which they coat their exposed skin before wrapping their hair in high turbans. These precautions protect them against the bat parasites that drop from the cave roof. Painted and turbaned, they look like priestesses as they make a small bow to a worn Buddha figure on the cave wall and enter the darkness.

In many world mythologies and religions, including those of Buddhism, there is the notion of going down into the underworld to retrieve knowledge. In ancient Greece it was known as katabasis. I sense an element of this mythical descent into Hades as they disappear on their particular quest.

The air cools dramatically as we enter the cave and the bats, disturbed by our intrusion, wheel and bicker. A fine drizzle of urine falls and the acrid stench of ammonia is almost overpowering. We cross narrow log bridges made black and slippery by compacted guano. The women descend into a darkness that glitters with cockroaches and begin to sweep up the fresh guano that powders the rocks.

Without a coating of clay and a turban, my hair is soon damp with bat urine and I feel the steady crawling of parasites on my body. These rather grotesque insects are wingless flies of either the Nycteribiidae or Streblidae families that feed on the bats’ blood. They also bite humans, and I noticed the women’s arms were stippled with the feverish red wheals of old bites.

Guano collector. Credit: Jeremy Holden/FFI.

There was something hellish and overwhelming about the cave, the smell, the malign shower of parasites and waste products, the frantic white noise of panicked bats, the cockroaches, and the slippery unsteady ground that made me want to leave. The blazing light of the entrance beckoned like the indescribable beauty of a near death experience, and I gratefully stumbled out into the light, filthy and sweaty, but having succeeded in my own subterranean quest.

There is no doubt that guano collecting, at least in Linno Cave is hard unpleasant work. But it provides a welcome boost to the local economy and gives these bats a human value – which for people is always the first consideration – to add to their demonstrated value as insect pest controllers.

A few days later I visited the more airy and salubrious caves above the monastery of Taunggalay. In the complex beneath, a huge new building was under construction – paid for, the monks told me, by the revenue made from guano collection.

Clearly the bats provide a useful ecosystem service – consuming vast quantities of rice field pests – while producing a valuable commodity in the form of their dung. It seems a simple scenario: leave the bats alone and they and the guano collectors will both thrive.

Pilgrims in an over-developed cave. Credit: Jeremy Holden/FFI.

In more infernal places like Linno Cave this seems a possibility. But there are many other bat caves around Hpa An where ancient Buddhist art and sculpture draw an increasing number of Buddhist pilgrims and tourists. With human visitors come electric lights and increasing levels of disturbance. In nearby Saddar Cave bat numbers have decreased as human visitors have increased. This huge complex still has bats, but nothing to compare to tiny Linno Cave, to which public access is restricted. Other caves I was to visit, which had been almost completely developed for tourists and pilgrims, had been abandoned by all but a few bats whose daily guano output would scarcely fill a tea cup.

The cave ecosystems created by the bats are fragile; too much disturbance and they begin to unravel. In developing these sites a delicate balance needs to be achieved, allowing the caves to be visited by pilgrims and tourists, but in a way that allows the wild creatures to share them, too. Our job as conservationists is to ensure that this happens and FFI is pleased to have developed good relationships with a number of cave monastery communities with whom we have worked constructively on cave management plans, channeling tourists to less damaging parts of the cave, some of which are home not only to bats but to sets of remarkable invertebrates.

]]>A chilling tale of man and naturehttp://www.fauna-flora.org/a-chilling-tale-of-man-and-nature/
Thu, 08 Jan 2015 23:48:00 +0000http://www.fauna-flora.org/?p=6781In Sumatra recently I heard a strange story. It was presented to me by a tour guide as a true account of events that occurred a few miles away on the slopes of Indonesia’s tallest active volcano. Almost immediately I recognised a mythical quality to the tale, and could even relate it to similar folk tales from other parts of the world.

I have sprinkled the story slightly with the magical dust of fiction to give it a more polished form, but it was basically this…

A farmer had stolen land from the national park to make farmland for himself. The forest he cleared was on the slopes of a huge volcano. Because the volcanic soil there was rich and dark it made excellent farmland, almost as productive and dynamic as the rainforest that is felled to clear the land.

Encroachment is seeing more and more species venturing into human worlds, often searching to food to survive. Credit: Jeremy Holden/FFI

The forest was beautiful and diverse: many species of orchids hung from the trees, there were birds found nowhere else, scarlet toadstools grew on the forest floor, and there were many species of animals. Tigers passed through, tapirs foraged the night-time forest, and monkeys crashed through the canopy.

When the farmer cut the trees and cleared the ground he burned away the thick vegetation until only the rich dark earth remained, blacker now from the ash of fig trees and the leaves of orchids. The trees and the plants had to submit; the insects were burned or crawled away; the birds fled, and the tiger and tapir stopped passing through. From the canopy the monkeys watched the smoke rise.

A year passed and the farmland was full of crops: potatoes in neat runnels, corn and chilli peppers, and a small tamarillo tree. Armed with a noisy spraying machine, the farmer rained down poisons to keep the insects away and any errant plants from returning. With no insects, the birds stopped coming. The ground was given over only to the farmer’s crops: it was as if the forest had never existed there.

But from the canopy nearby the monkeys could see the corn ripening on the stalks, and so – hungry, with their fig trees gone – they came to eat the crop. Although the farmer had taken everything from the forest he was angry at having to give anything back and he decided to teach the greedy monkeys a lesson. Monkeys are like men, they are greedy and easy to trap, so the farmer made a trap and baited it with some of his precious corn.

The next day when the farmer returned to check his trap, he found a monkey caught in the small wooden cage. In its fear and confusion the little monkey had not eaten any of the corn. Being a young monkey it was easy for the farmer to subdue and take out of the trap.

Looking at the frightened monkey, who was grimacing in fear, the farmer felt nothing but anger, affronted that this little thief should steal from him – a hardworking farmer. He called his friend, a nearby farmer, over to look at the little villain. “Let’s teach this thief a lesson,” he said to his friend.

There is no account of what the friend did, but one hopes he turned away in shame as the farmer began to torture the little monkey. There is no need to recount what he did, suffice to say the little creature was finally released, dazed and broken, to crawl back into the forest and die – a lesson for all the other greedy monkeys.

The farmer wanted to send a message to all the other naughty monkeys... Credit: Jeremy Holden/FFI

Sometime later the farmer started to notice things happening to his body. His hands became painful and his fingers curled up as if they had been broken. Sores developed on his stomach as if he had been burned with a lighted cigarette. There were other complaints, too, and with dread the farmer realised that they were the same injuries he had inflicted on the little monkey.

The village doctor was baffled by the farmer’s symptoms, and none of the medicines he prescribed had the slightest effect. The farmer grew sicker and frailer and could no longer tend his farm. Without the rain of poisonous insecticides the small creatures returned, and with them the birds. The first jungle pioneers crept back, and monkeys came down to eat the sour tamarillos ripening on the tree the farmer had planted.

Within one year of capturing the monkey the farmer died too. Only one man in the village – the farmer’s friend who had seen what he did to the monkey – knew why the farmer had died. Perhaps thinking of the farmer, perhaps of his own redemption, he suggested to the family that they bury the farmer in his farmland at the foot of volcano. “He had loved that land so much,” the friend explained.

Important lessons ignored

True or not (and I felt no desire to verify it) the message of the story seems seemed clear, profound and wise, and one that humans have told since the beginning of time.

The West African pygmies have a similar tale of what befalls a boy who captures a bird because he is enamoured of its song, while the Native Americans proclaimed, “what we do to the web, we do to ourselves.”

The message of this particular myth has perhaps never been so ignored, and yet been so important, as it is today.

]]>Elusive jungle rabbit keeps researchers on the hophttp://www.fauna-flora.org/elusive-sumatran-stripped-jungle-rabbit-video-keeps-researchers-on-hop/
Fri, 14 Nov 2014 10:38:32 +0000http://www.fauna-flora.org/?p=6626When I was about five or six years old, my parents ordered a set of wildlife encyclopaedias which arrived by post once a week. I remember the first one arriving in a thin brown cardboard box. My brother and I huddled with my mother on the bed as she opened it. The cover featured an aardvark – the alphabetical first in any animal encyclopaedia.

The photographs were what made these books amazing. At the time they featured state-of-the-art wildlife photography, with incredibly intimate images of everything from diatoms to duck-billed platypus.

But there were some species that weren’t represented by photographs but by coloured illustrations. There were only a few, but I always remembered these species because the implication was that they were rare, unseen – perhaps on the edge of extinction – and this gave them an almost mythical quality.

The New Zealand huia was one – an unusual bird with a curved beak and an extremely affectionate nature between pairs, which mated for life; the Sumatran striped rabbit was another. The huia was never seen again and is now considered extinct. The Sumatran striped rabbit, it seems, was just elusive and unknown, living hidden in the deepest, wettest mountain forests of Sumatra.

Scavenging for clues

Years later, I found myself living in Sumatra and working for Fauna & Flora International (FFI) in Kerinci Seblat National Park. I learned that even 25 years on from my first encounter with the Sumatran striped rabbit illustration there was still no photograph of a living animal; in fact no researchers had seen it since 1972, and before that not for many years.

Occasionally we met locals who claimed to have seen them. They all said it was a stupid animal, very easy to approach and just pick up – a characteristic shared by the unfortunate huia, which probably helped secure its path to extinction.

Sluggish and unconcerned by humans: it didn’t sound much like the kind of rabbits I knew, which disappeared in a flash at the slightest sign of movement. But then the Sumatran striped rabbit wasn’t a normal rabbit. It lived in dense rainforest for a start, whereas most rabbits are found in open grassy areas. It had small ears and, most remarkably, a beautiful striped coat of brown and cream, like an art deco clock.

I decided to try and get the first photograph and learn something more about this almost forgotten creature. Following up on a sighting made by a Sumatran friend, I placed a series of camera traps in the location he had seen two rabbits eating fallen fruit. When searching for animals that are poorly known, it is important to use whatever scant information one can get on their habits.

The fallen fruit was a clue. No one was sure what the rabbits fed on but fallen fruit seemed as likely as anything else, so for bait I chose a particularly aromatic type of guava that was in fruit at the time and placed 5 kg around the cameras. Three days later I went back to look. All the fruit had gone, but the film showed only forest rats making repeated sorties to steal the guavas. I rebaited and tried again.

I had placed the camera traps on an extinct volcano at between 1,800 and 2,100 metres above sea level – the known habitat of the rabbit. Each time I baited the cameras I had to make the climb with 5 kg of fruit. And each time I came back with more pictures of rats. I got civets and a rare pheasant, too, but no rabbits.

Elephants further complicated the task. Two domesticated elephants lived in the forests at the base of the volcano. They were supposedly tame, but living semi-wild had made them unpredictable. They had learned that I was making regular trips with a backpack full of odoriferous fruit, and they began to ambush me along the trail. It became more and more difficult to outwit them. A few guavas cast in the opposite direction as I tried to scurry past no longer worked. They wanted the lot, and the trip was getting dangerous.

Perseverance pays

After almost two months I reached the point of giving up. The tough climb up the mountain every few days, the rats and the elephants made me think I was wasting my time. The guavas were getting harder to find, too.

I made one last visit, without a backpack full of fruit, breezing past the elephants without trouble, to remove the cameras. Back in town I processed the film and discovered that on this last trip we had got the first picture of Sumatran striped rabbit. It was small in the frame and not an award-winning image, but the animal was caught in mid hop, and very clearly a rabbit, despite its small ears and dense jungle home. It proved to be the first photograph of this elusive animal.

Fifteen years later and I am back in Kerinci setting cameras again (this time video camera traps) and hoping to learn more about the rabbit. Recently we got FFI’s first moving footage of Sumatran striped rabbit, hopping around the forest floor – not award-winning quality footage, but it’s a start.

]]>Sumatran secrets start to be revealed by high altitude camera trappinghttp://www.fauna-flora.org/sumatran-secrets-revealed-high-altitude-camera-trapping/
Tue, 16 Sep 2014 03:14:11 +0000http://www.fauna-flora.org/?p=6435Our camera trapping efforts are rewarded as he uncovers the secret life of the mammals in Sumatra's high altitude forests.]]>Sunday 13 April

At 2,000 metres above sea level, surrounded by mountains and tropical forest, the weather at camp can be unpredictable.

Tonight thick clouds spill over the crater rim and the rising moon is haloed by a huge circular spectrum – a ‘moon ring’ or 22° halo – formed by light refracting from ice crystals high in the atmosphere. The temperature drops rapidly and we all suffer a frigid and sleepless night.

A moon ring over the crater rim at Gunung Tujuh. Credit: Jeremy Holden/FFI

In the two months since I was last here heavy rain has fallen. The vegetation has run riot and the paths are muddy. I can see from the churned-up trails that pigs have arrived. In four months of camera trapping we have not recorded a single pig.

In any other area of the park this would be very unusual. At this altitude, however, pigs appear to be rare. This kind of information is what we hope to learn from this high altitude camera-trapping programme.

The fact that there are many pig footprints suggests that this is a migration event.

Within tropical rainforest, pigs, especially the larger bearded pigs, Sus barbatus, constantly migrate, covering vast distances. I suspect that these signs may be from bearded pigs. If so this will be the first record from Gunung Tujuh.

Even the local guides are not familiar with them, at least not from forest at this altitude. But it doesn’t mean that they don’t travel here.

In Sumatran folklore the bearded pig is known as lumba lumba, the same name used for dolphin.

This is no coincidence. In the past, when the pigs arrived in an area, they came through in large herds, crashing through the forest when disturbed like pods of breaching dolphins. Then mysteriously, as quickly as they came, they would be gone.

In 18th Century England, Gilbert White explained the disappearance of swallows in autumn with the notion that they enter a torpid state. Others thought they hibernated underwater in reed-fringed lakes.

In Sumatra, the belief for bearded pigs was similar: after moving through the forest they traveled to the sea and became dolphins. Clearly this is not the case, but the movements of bearded pig remain a mystery, and a detailed study is long overdue.

Learning more about the movements of bearded pigs is essential for more than simply satisfying our curiosity. In mainland Malaysia, for instance, bearded pig numbers have crashed.

This is probably because of habitat fragmentation causing forest blocks to become smaller and isolated, and in consequence unable to support the large numbers of pigs that formerly used them.

With their old migration routes compromised, and known food sources now destroyed or unreachable, it seems that bearded pigs are disappearing across their former range.

In Sumatra bearded pigs are still relatively common, but if the trend in habitat fragmentation continues they will start to vanish from these forests, too.

Bearded pig in Sumatra. Credit: Jeremy Holden/FFI

Monday 14 April

A bright morning filled with gibbon song and the metallic calls of Sumatran treepie, a bird endemic to these mountains.

We set off from camp early to check the camera traps.

In front of one camera we find huge cloven hooved prints, too large for anything but an adult bearded pig or a sambar deer. I suspect the former and am delighted when we check the memory card to find footage of a huge bearded pig.

On other cameras we record a pack of wild dogs, or dhole. This is another unusual species at this altitude and clearly the dholes are here because the pigs are here.

The pigs are not only a vital prey species for predators such as dhole and tiger, but also important for a healthy functioning rainforest. When the pigs come through an area of forest they plough up the ground in search of food, helping to aerate the soil and aid with the germination of new seedlings.

As with many of the complex relationships between species in the rainforest, we still know little about the role that bearded pigs play in the ecosystem. I suspect in this case their disappearance will have many repercussions, not least for predators like dhole and tiger that feed on them.

Bearded pig video, captured at high altitudes in Kerinci Seblat National Park.

This pack of dhole were also captured at Gunung Tujuh in Kerinci Seblat National Park.

]]>The wonder of nature at night through the lenshttp://www.fauna-flora.org/the-wonder-of-nature-at-night-through-the-lens/
Wed, 27 Aug 2014 10:00:34 +0000http://www.fauna-flora.org/?p=6348The rainforest is full of surprises. Even familiar things can suddenly show themselves in a different light – sometimes quite literally.

The delicate white fruiting bodies of Filoboletus mushrooms are a familiar site in Sumatra. Usually a week or so after a period of heavy rain, they spring up in photogenic clumps on rotten logs or fallen twigs on the forest floor. I had photographed them numerous times during the day without realising that their true extraordinary nature was only revealed at night.

Many denizens of the rainforest are more active after dark, and during Fauna & Flora International (FFI) biodiversity surveys, we spend a few hours each night tramping through the forest with torches looking for nocturnal creatures.

Snakes, frogs and insects are all more active once the sun sets, and in the concentrated beam of a torch, well camouflaged species – which can be almost impossible to spot during the day – can be more easily seen.

But sometimes it takes the natural shadows of a rainforest night for certain things to be revealed. One particularly dry and bright night I was out looking for snakes. Dry moonlit nights are usually less productive for some reason and I didn’t have much success.

The moon was so bright on this night that I turned off the torch and sat down on a log to let my eyes get accustomed to the silvery light.

After a few minutes I could see clearly. I became aware of a greenish glow nearby, an unearthly luminance at the end of the log I was sitting on. Earlier in the day I had spotted a cluster of Filoboletus on this log, their wax-white caps obvious on the dark forest floor. Now I noticed that these same fungi were glowing with their own mysterious light.

Their light was faint, but moving closer to them it was quite clear – bright enough, I suspected, to be recorded on film. There was no way to meter this faint light so I set up the camera for a ten-minute exposure. It was pleasant sitting in the forest, so I tried another exposure at 15 minutes; then another at 30 minutes; and finally (as I had discovered I could actually read my book by the light of the moon) an hour exposure.

This was in the days of film, so it was over a month before I got the results back. I trawled through the 20 films assessing all the things I had photographed in the last month without thought of the fungus pictures.

Afterwards I suddenly recalled my experiment. I looked back through the transparencies and found one strip that was blank. The first four shots showed nothing at all. Only on the fifth frame – the one-hour exposure – was there the faintest sign of an image. Film had a latitude of around five stops, meaning that this faint exposure was probably five stops underexposed. To record the fungus I would need at least a five-hour exposure.

A few weeks later I found another small group of Filoboletus. This time I built a small tent over the fungi to guard against ambient light and the possibility of rain ruining the shoot. I set up the camera to give a five-hour exposure and went out to look for snakes.

It remains unclear why certain species of fungus are bioluminescent. It is not an uncommon characteristic, but is more often seen in the mycelium of fungus rather than in the fruiting body as happens with Filoboletus. The effect is caused by an enzyme known as luciferase.

The next time I checked my processed films I discovered this single image that had captured the mysterious night time phenomenon of Filoboletus.

The true beauty of the Filoboletus fungus is revealed in the dark of night. Credit: Jeremy Holden/FFI.

]]>‘Be prepared’: the motto of scouts and photographers alikehttp://www.fauna-flora.org/be-prepared-the-motto-of-scouts-and-photographers-alike/
Tue, 12 Aug 2014 00:57:23 +0000http://www.fauna-flora.org/?p=6189It is a rare occurrence for wildlife photographers to try and photograph large terrestrial rainforest mammals in their natural environment. The terrain is too difficult, the light generally poor, and the animals themselves scarce and unpredictable. This all adds up to an almost impossible task.

There are two options: either a long and probably fruitless wait in a hide (Frans Lanting spent two weeks in a jungle hide waiting for peccaries that never came) or being in the right place at the right time, with the right equipment. A further caveat to this is that the equipment also has to be ready. It was only because I was given a lucky break twice in one day that I managed to get this image of Sumatran serow.

The Sumatran serow is now an increasingly scarce animal. The IUCN class it as Vulnerable because, although living in remote and vertiginous habitat, it is a species actively targeted by hunters. Not only is the meat sought after, it also suffers the unfortunate distinction of being an animal with a perceived medicinal value. Both the short horns and the bones are used in traditional remedies, sometimes for setting broken bones.

Serow snare on Terpanggang. Credit: Jeremy Holden/FFI

During six years in Sumatra I had seen only one serow, a huge male animal that dashed across the road in front of my Land Rover. And despite hundreds of thousands of hours camera trapping, we had only photo-trapped serow once, at 2,700 metres on a volcanic peak. That animal had two ropes snared around its neck.

Opportunity knocks

My lucky break came one sunny day in the east of Kerinci Seblat National Park. I was leading two ornithologists from BirdLife International, on the lookout for some of Sumatra’s endemic birds.

While they were trying to locate Salvadori’s pheasants, I took a walk to a large saltlick nearby. Usually I would approach this area preparedly. It is a volcanic phenomenon, with hot sulphurous water rising from a vent in the river. The mineral-rich water and soil attracts large mammals, and over the centuries they have created an open grassy area, probably the size of a football field in an English village.

This spot was popular with sambar deer, and occasionally, elephants. I had recently spent five days sitting in a hide overlooking the saltlick, and in that time got a few shots of sambar deer.

It was because of this that I didn’t creep quietly up on the saltlick with my camera ready. I knew I couldn’t get any better pictures of the deer than I already had. I arrived there quietly, nonetheless, and sat down beneath a tree to write up my notes. My camera and lenses were in my backpack beside me, everything wrapped in double plastic bags to keep out the humid rainforest air.

Twenty minutes later, while engrossed in my writing, I heard a snort.

Looking up, I saw a family of bearded pigs 25 metres in front of me, completely out in the open: two huge adults, a sub adult (or ‘teenager’ if you like), and eight stripey piglets.

These are impressive animals, twice the size of the average wild pig, and sprouting a wild thicket of hair from their snouts. There are few pictures of this species in the wild and this was a magical opportunity.

I was clearly downwind, for although the animals were close, they had no idea I was there, despite being in full view. The moment I reached for my bag they sensed something, and one of the adults raised its head. Its myopia was comical as it gazed my way. Seeing no movement (I was frozen like a rabbit in headlights) it went back to grazing.

I made another furtive move to open my bag, knowing it was pointless. There was no way I could get the camera out, open two plastic bags to retrieve my telephoto lens, and attach it to the camera without them noticing.

That second movement was enough to alert the largest of the pigs. It raised its snout and came towards me.

It was only then that I realised I might be in danger. An adult bearded pig weighs in at up to 150 kg and has tusks like the sharp end of a pickaxe. When I had bumped into bearded pigs in the forest they had always ran away shrieking, but this animal had piglets to defend.

With snout raised it approached to within about 10 metres, its porcine eyes straining. I turned to stone and tried desperately not to blink. I understood now why some animals freeze when they think they have been discovered: it works. The pig ambled back to its comrades and slowly they traversed the open saltlick while I sat frozen and cursing.

Wildlife photographers live for these moments. I hadn’t been ready, and I had lost a fantastic shot: a family of bearded pigs in plain sight. I sat there immobile until the pigs disappeared behind a tree. Once they were out of sight I wildly scrabbled for the camera and unwieldy telephoto lens.

I should have approached the saltlick prepared; I should have set everything up before I started writing notes…

The agony of hindsight. Instead I sat cursing my luck. Of course I had been lucky to see the pigs, and for anyone but an unprepared photographer this would have been a fantastic sighting. It was my carelessness that was at fault.

I sat for half an hour hoping the pigs might come back. They didn’t. I carefully stalked them, but they had gone.

Que serow, serow – whatever will be, will be

My plan that morning was to head to a spectacular waterfall above the saltlick area. At least I could salvage something from the day. Normally I wouldn’t walk with a long telephoto lens on the camera. It isn’t good for the camera, for a start, but it also makes progress difficult. However, this morning I left the lens on and the camera attached to the tripod as I trekked, still berating myself, towards the waterfall.

At one point, stumbling through a meadow beside the river, I trod in a hidden elephant footprint and went sprawling. The camera fell forward and the long lens dunked perfectly into another water-filled elephant footprint, like a sponge finger into a cup of tea. At this point I really did begin to feel victimised by the universe, and I continued to the waterfall wondering what was the point of anything.

By the time I reached the falls – a spectacular sight in itself – the light was poor and I knew I was not going to be taking any award-winning landscape shots either. I parked the camera and tripod and walked to the edge of the open crater beneath the falls.

Suddenly, from the corner of my eye, I saw movement.

A serow came out of the forest edge and trundled down the open crater. Once again I was in full view and I had to freeze like a surprised owl. The serow leapt the river in one neat jump and came towards me. Fortunately, there was a huge rock between my position and the falls. The moment the serow disappeared behind it I scurried to grab the camera. In moments I was in position and the second the animal emerged I was focused on it.

Amazingly it stopped and raised its head. I could see the smoky mist of the falls in the background, some pink impatiens flowers in the grass, and this majestic animal looking almost heraldic with its yellow mane.

I fired off thirteen frames in quick succession. The swirling air currents in the crater must have taken my scent to the serow, for suddenly it bolted, leaping the river again and blundering up the slope, back the way it had come.

The little tears of frustration that had tried to squeeze out earlier transformed themselves into tears of joy. I had done what wildlife photographers were supposed to do – made the most of a lucky moment and got the shot.

]]>Sweeping for tiger snares in Sumatrahttp://www.fauna-flora.org/sweeping-for-tiger-snares-in-sumatra/
Mon, 14 Jul 2014 12:14:11 +0000http://www.fauna-flora.org/?p=6172High on Sumatra’s Terpanggang Mountain we stumble across a snare made from thick nylon rope. The noose hangs across the trail, designed to catch something around the neck. From its placement on this steep ridge, it is clear that the target animal is the Sumatran serow, a species of increasingly endangered goat-antelope. A thorough survey of the slope reveals eight more snares, but higher up there are probably more.

Local field guide Doni Effendi explains: “Now it is the holy month of Ramadan we can expect to find many more snares.”

“Increased snaring activity usually starts two weeks before Ramadan begins and continues throughout the month,” Debbie explains. “Although Ramadan is based around fasting, it also involves feasting – especially at the end of the festival, during what the Indonesians call Hari Raya. Extra meat for this festival often comes from the forest, either from small-scale local trapping, or by a much more concerted effort by those wishing to make a profit.

“Fairly consistently, over the 14 years we’ve been working here, we’ve found that more than half of all deer snares each year were discovered during this six week period.”

Red muntjac. Credit: Jeremy Holden/FFI.

It was for this reason that Debbie and colleagues at the national park began what is known as ‘The Great Kerinci Snare Sweep’ – a targeted effort by the TPCU teams to remove as many snares as possible from the forest during this period.

“We started The Great Kerinci Snare Sweep in 2012 as an initiative that helps to both protect the wildlife of the Kerinci Seblat National Park and build the capacity of the rangers,” said Debbie. “One of the biggest mistakes that can be made in conservation is to believe there isn’t a problem just because you haven’t found it.

“We knew from past experience that there was a surge in bush meat during this period, but snare poaching records had declined and we were concerned we weren’t finding as many deer snares as we should. It was clear we weren’t always looking in the right places for snares during the Ramadan poaching peak, and that we needed to rethink the way we were working during this period.”

“In discussion with partners from the national park we decided to run a competition: which of our six TPCU ranger units could find the most active snares during the six weeks leading up to Hari Raya?”

New approaches, better results

This wasn’t just an effort to remove snares, but an exercise to inspire the tiger rangers to think in different ways and encourage them to build and extend their information networks among forest edge communities.

“Many of our patrol areas were becoming known to poachers, and we suspected they were looking for safer places to hunt,” Debbie continues. “This meant we had to react by securing better intelligence on where poachers had moved for an improved patrol response.

“The depletion of tiger prey is obviously a direct threat to tiger well-being, but deer snares can also kill tigers – in one instance we lost a tiger (which had only recently been radio-collared) to a nylon snare set for serow.”

This sad picture, taken in 2008, shows a Sumatran tiger killed in a wild pig snare. Credit: FFI.

The initiative proved a great success. In the first year, 383 active snares were removed during the six-week competition (from heavy gauge wire cable snares set for tigers to nylon snares for deer, and string snares set for pheasant and mouse deer), which amounted to 66% of all the active snares destroyed by TPCU patrols in the whole of that year.

Last year the teams used their information networks to detect and destroy a total of 755 active snares, with 290 in just one site – accounting for 68% of all snares destroyed in 2013.

Making poaching unattractive

The competition works on a point system with, naturally, active tiger snares scoring the highest points. The units must produce documentary evidence of their results, and the winning team gets a cash prize. In 2013, the teams did so well that smaller consolation prizes were also awarded to the two runner-up teams.

“This not a religious phenomenon, or just a Muslim problem,” Debbie notes. “In the north of the Indonesian island of Sulawesi the same thing occurs around Christmas. When there are feasts people need extra food – hunters are more than happy to try to meet this demand and secure additional money for their own needs during the holiday period.

“The rangers are sensitive to this and are not going to bust a poor farmer for setting a few deer snares around his farm (although those snares will be removed). We are more interested in the market-based problem, the large-scale, well-organised snaring for profit – which is driven by greed not poverty. This type of wildlife crime is often directly linked to the more serious kinds, like the tiger poaching gangs, which does concern us.”

By consistently removing these snares, the TCPUs are ensuring that this type of hunting is no longer a good investment for poachers.

Loss of snare materials and wasted time setting them soon makes it an unviable and costly pursuit, and in areas where TPCUs have maintained routine or information-led patrols, deer poaching records have declined and the long snare lines that were a common feature in Kerinci’s early years are now rarely encountered.

By removing those nine serow snares from Terpanggang we perhaps saved the life of one of Sumatra’s rarer animals, and by the end of the Great Kerinci Snare Sweep the lives of hundreds of rainforest animals – including tigers – may have been saved, and the teams will be that little bit more savvy on how to save the Sumatran tiger.

]]>Heart of Darkness: Venturing into the Tanintharyihttp://www.fauna-flora.org/heart-of-darkness-venturing-into-the-tanintharyi/
Fri, 27 Jun 2014 15:07:30 +0000http://www.fauna-flora.org/?p=5964“I am concerned for your and Jakob’s safety,” said Zin from Myanmar’s Forest Department. “We are not sure about the situation with the KNU. We haven’t even been that far up the Tanintharyi ourselves – no outsiders have since independence.”

The KNU he referred to is the Karen National Union, a rebel group representing independence for a Karen state in southern Myanmar. I considered Zin’s fears as more official concern than worry over a legitimate danger – none of the various rebel groups in Myanmar are known for kidnapping foreigners. But they were also based on an ignorance of what the situation in this area actually was. The independence he referred to was Myanmar’s independence from British rule, and our little expedition was the first of its kind to venture into this part of the country for over sixty years.

Tanintharyi river with sand collectors at Tagu. Credit: Jeremy Holden/FFI

As Myanmar emerges from its dark past and establishes itself as a modern nation, the government has decided that a proper protected area network must be created. Our visit to the remote forested areas of Tanintharyi was part of a Fauna & Flora International (FFI) initiative to help with this process by assessing the biological value of the area and determining how best to protect it. Our group would split into two teams: a forest survey team to assess the biodiversity, and a village team to interview local communities and map forest use.

Monk and Asiatic black bear. Credit: Jeremy Holden/FFI

Eight hours on an open boat from Myiek on the west coast brought us to Tanintharyi township. Another four hours and we arrive at the small riverside settlement of Tagu. As with many forest-edge communities there is an abundance of wild pets. We discover various forlorn primates chained or caged: pig-tailed macaques, a white-handed gibbon, and a huge stump-tailed macaque whose fur is matted and greasy with its own excrement. A pitiful sight, but a useful one for Jakob from the German Primate Centre …who is here to collect primate faeces as part of a PhD study.

In a local monastery we find both sun and Asian black bear chained up beneath the monks sleeping quarters. In a paddock outside a muddy sambar deer is tethered, its antlers sawn down to flat stumps after it seriously gored one of the monks. The same monk shows us his scars; then gives us a show with the black bear, which gets boisterous. He treats it more like a naughty child than a potentially dangerous wild animal, and I wonder how long it will be before the sambar incident is repeated.

A monk with bears in the Tanintharyi. Credit: Jeremy Holden/FFI

After another day’s travel by boat in the baking sun we spend the night on the riverbank, sleeping in a hut on a bed of areca nuts. In the morning we leave for the forest after gathering a guide and twenty porters from the nearby village. This is lowland forest, the most uncomfortable kind. It is hot and wet, full of leeches and thorns and low tangled vines that impede our way. At 6 ft 7 Jakob has it worse than me. His extra height causes him to disturb a wasp’s nest that the short Burmese passed under. I hear ‘Vespa’ followed by Germanic cursing as Jakob flees the angry wasps.

Areca nut harvesting along Tanintharyi. Credit: Jeremy Holden/FFI

After an hour’s walk I am ecstatic to find elephant footprints. The presence of large mammals will prove this area is a suitable candidate for protected status. Elephants are one of the key species we hope to find, along with Malay tapir, a huge forest bovid known as gaur, plus leopard, or even tiger. My excitement is short-lived after I learn that a domestic elephant had made the tracks. The guide explains we might have to walk three days before we see evidence of wild elephants.

Tapir footprint in Tanintharyi. Credit: Jeremy Holden/FFI

The plan is to walk into the remote heart of the area and set camera traps. For forest surveys such as this, camera trapping is the best way to discover which mammals are present. As with all camera-trapping programmes we need to target the species we hope to find. For large mammals one of the best options is to look for salt licks – places where the large herbivores go to obtain minerals vital to their digestion and health. Our lead guide, a stern-faced local hunter, knew such a place, which, he claimed, lie three-days trek in to the forest.

Tanintharyi forest. Credit: Jeremy Holden/FFI

On the second day we left the hot tangled stream valley and headed up into the hills. Our guide told us to take water from the stream before we started climbing: we would not see water again until evening, he said. On the ridge trail we found evidence of tapir, and scratch marks on a tree made by bears and clouded leopard. Jakob collected dung from stump-tailed macaques. By evening we had all run out of water. My tongue felt swollen and dry like an old discarded slipper.

Our guide, who carried nothing but a shoulder bag and homemade musket (a sign of knowledge and superiority), seemed confused by the trail. We had constantly backtracked during the day, and now, high on ridge, he suggested we make camp. The next water was over two hours away, he said, and none of us would make that. I tipped water out of my wellingtons. Not the overflow from a stream crossing, but the day’s accumulated sweat.

According to the guide there was a small stream in the valley below where we could get water. I decided to make the trek down. However shallow this stream was I was intent on bathing away the grime of two days trekking. With a couple of porters to collect water for camp I made the descent into the valley. Arriving at the stream I felt a strange sense of déjà vu. It looked familiar. With horror I realised it was the same stream that we had collected our last water from. Our guide had led us in a huge circle.

Bamboo forest in Tanintharyi. Credit: Jeremy Holden/FFI

Our expert guide admitted later that he had only been to the salt lick once in his life, and that was almost a decade ago. I groaned inwardly. Our cameras could only be set for one month before the onset of the monsoon. We needed a good location to set them if we were going to get much in that short time. I began to wonder if the salt lick even existed.

Two days later I was even less sure. From our last camp the guide said it was two hours. Five hours and many river crossing later there was no sign of a salt lick. But on the sandbars we crossed were signs of elephant and the strange tracks of tapir. Large mammals were using this area. We pushed on for another two hours and magically the river widened and the air smelt of sulphur. On the far bank we found what we were looking for: a muddy pool issuing hot bubbling water. The earth around was churned up like a paddock, showing the footprints of tapirs, gaurs and elephants. Perfect. We set 10 cameras and got out as quickly as we could.

That night in the hot sarcophagus of my tent while the rain pelted down and a pool of water collected at my feet I felt happy for the first time on this trip. We had discovered a remote and secret place that large mammals visited and we had placed our cameras. Now all we had to do was wait to prove that this area needs to become part of Myanmar’s protected area system.

The phone alarm’s first bleep is always unwelcome. Rainforest camps engender a shallow, dream-filled sleep that I am reluctant to exchange for the pre-dawn chill. But it is important to wake early and assess the photographic potential of the weather.

This morning has brought fog and no wind – perfect conditions to record the damselflies on the lake margin. I guess these are from the genus Ischnura, but I have no idea what species – probably a common one, but it is always useful to check with the experts. Who knows, it could be interesting…

Even a slight breeze can cause problems when photographing insects. The still conditions and the fog mean the damsels will be encumbered with condensation and unable to fly until the sun dries. I record two, maybe three, species before breakfast.

The forest is still dripping wet when we leave camp. Pushing through the undergrowth we are soon soaked; getting snagged on a branch or barbed tendril of rattan sends down a cold shower of sparkling water droplets on our heads.

While we are on the mountain I want to check on a Critically Endangered plant, the carnivorous pitcher Nepenthes aristolochioides. It is known from only on a few ridges around the Gunung Tujuh crater lake in Sumatra, which means that today we have a strenuous hike. Theft of wild plants by zealous collectors – coupled with the desiccating effect of the 1997 El Niño event – sent the few existing populations into decline, and it was feared that this species might disappear entirely from the wild.

Nepenthes aristolochioides thriving once again in its only known habitiat. Credit: Jeremy Holden/FFI.

Nepenthes aristolochioides is fastidious about where it grows, preferring the high moss forest ridges formed by the remains of the volcanic cone. It is a struggle up the steep slopes, but the forest here is relatively benign with few thorns and almost no leeches.

The moss, or cloud, forest is one of the most beautiful environments on earth, but it is also a fragile one – climate change is already threatening the integrity of high altitude forests across the planet.

Although the trees in these forests may not be affected by small changes in air temperature, it is a different story for the epiphytic vegetation – plants that anchor themselves onto the bark or branches of the trees – that so characterises these habitats.

Some 10% of the higher vascular plants are epiphytic, and they rely on atmospheric mist to get water. Without this they gradually wither and die, as happened during the El Niño. Nepenthes aristolochioides can also be epiphytic – the ones that were didn’t survive the drought of 1997.

We visit all the known colonies of aristolochioides along the ridge and find they are thriving; some vines bear robust-looking pitchers larger than I have previously seen. There are fewer vines than before, and this can still be considered an extremely rare plant, but for the moment it is making a comeback.

The epiphytic orchids are returning, too. There are six or seven species in flower, including the beautiful Epigenuim cymbidioides and the strange stylised flowers of Liparis. The last time I was on this ridge it was dry and devastated, so there is something very satisfying in seeing that balance has returned… and with it these wonderful, fragile plants.If you missed part one of Jeremy’s Rainforest Diary, you can read it here.